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Gamepark Releases the GP2X Wiz

Posted by timothy on from the for-the-obscurantists dept.

Craig writes "Gamepark have officially released the follow-up to its successful Linux handheld, the GP2X. The GP2X Wiz is a 533Mhz Linux-based handheld that's a similar size to the GBA Micro, with a touchscreen and 12 games preloaded into memory, many of which are demos of commercial games. The system comes with 1GB of flash memory, which can be expanded with SD cards. The Homebrew Community have already released ports of games such as Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Warcraft and emulators for SNES, Genesis, Commodore 64 and the arcade emulator Mame."

15 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Successful? by sys.stdout.write · · Score: 4, Funny

    Describing it as "successful" is quite generous, considering I am a gaming fan and have never heard of it..

    1. Re:Successful? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If it made money it is successful. Since it did not fail, it is successful. There are lots of successful people and products I am sure you have never heard of.

    2. Re:Successful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      let's put this in perspective.

    3. Re:Successful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Describing yourself as "a gaming fan" is quite generous, considering the GP2X was successful and you have never heard of it..

    4. Re:Successful? by papasui · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Need to realize that it's a niche market they are after. They aren't competing with the DS or the PSP in the commerical games arena, but the homebrew arena.

    5. Re:Successful? by Patch86 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I didn't realise the universal measure of success was whether you had heard of it.

      Seriously though, success is relative. We're not talking about a DS beater here. They're a comparatively tiny company and their target is the very niche market of home-brewers and enthusiasts. From the stand point of the size of their company and their stated aims, they've been pretty successful so far.

    6. Re:Successful? by Anonymusing · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whooosh.

      If selling 60,000 units was enough to be profitable, then it's a success. Maybe not iPod-like success, but still a success.

      --
      Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
  2. Ouch by Steauengeglase · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like it would cause a bad case of dual Nintendo Thumb. Also, where is the wireless? Am I missing this in the product description?

  3. Re:any detailed specs? by lobiusmoop · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wikipedia is your friend

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  4. alternative to this which looks more promising by andycon · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://openpandora.org/ this is made by some of the same people that were on the first GP2X team i believe. from what i've read it seems more promising.

  5. Re:Huh? by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    No... They had a holdup due to supply issues much like Pandora's had- otherwise you'd have both of them available right now for your gaming pleasure.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  6. Re:What's that in Geek? by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    What's this in geek?

    It is a 533MHz ARM9 based SoC with OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenVG 1.0 hardware support and APIs to use the same. This means you can do OpenGL 1.4 type games with reasonable performance. It probably doesn't have the oomph to do ioquake3 stuff (CPU's just not there) but it should do the things they're claiming of it all the same.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  7. The size of WHAT? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm sorry but the author of that sentence has never even seen or held a Game Boy Micro in person.

    From the specifications alone, you can see that the GP2x Wiz is 50% bigger and 70% heavier than a GameBoy Micro:

    Game Boy Micro:
    - 50Ã--101Ã--17.2 mm (86860 mm3)
    - 80 grams (built-in battery)

    GP2x Wiz:
    - 121x61x18 mm (132858 mm3, 50% bigger)
    - 136 g (with battery)

    As far as processing power goes, however, the GP2x Wiz wins. No debate there.

    I'm also not a fan of what seems to be a dual-gamepad setup, even if the pad on the right is supposed to be used as "buttons" (and even if the pad is split in four equal parts, it's still a gamepad). Weird, to say the least.

  8. Re:All you need to know by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Alright then, I'm taking out my credit card.

    Oh wait, it's maxed out!

    VISA beats the Wiz!

  9. Re:Android? by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Android will likely run on the Pandora. The Pandora is the spiritual successor to the GP2X. (as opposed to actual successor)

    A bunch of community/forum elites got tired of fighting with lame design choices like the difficult to use joystick, or poorly thought out DPAD, or removal of networking/debugging support; they're making their own dream handheld, which is significantly more powerful, and is designed right.

    According to them, it has the best input scheme they've ever tried. ;) That could just be creators tooting their own horn, but after talking with them and reading their posts for the past year, I really doubt it.

    The GP2X F100 was the best version of the GP2X, with every version after that getting worse. Updating firmware was absolutely horrible, as no less than five versions of the GP2X were released, all of them bricked by different versions of the firmware.

    Despite the lame joystick, the F100 v1 was the best because of projects like USB networking, USB debugging, and even a Java VM. Then GPH replaced the USB chip with a cheaper one, cutting two of those features, and they continued to make bad choices after that.

    Despite all this, the community persists.

    The GP2X has very lackluster hardware, but emus are reported to run better on it than on a PSP or even iPhone. (despite both of those having significantly faster hardware) That's because of the relatively open nature of the platform.

    Most of the GP2X community (gp32x) is throwing their weight behind the Pandora, because it's fully open, rather than just relatively open. We don't want to have our input ignored, then fight with lame design choices. We want the devs to listen, and we want a platform that has mature open source drivers available - a platform like the OMAP 3530. :)